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Almost two years ago I posted a blog about the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA); ARRA, or the “Stimulus Bill”, has gotten pilloried in the media as a colossal failure and waste of taxpayer dollars. But if you would take the time to do a little research, you would see that most of the coverage has been far from the truth.[continue reading]

The award winners of the 2014 RESNET Cross Border Home Builder Challenge, which helps promote the utilization of the HERS (Home Energy Rating System) Index have been announced by Steve Baden, Executive Director of RESNET, and John Godden, President of the Canadian counterpart CRESNET at the RESNET annual conference in Atlanta, GA. [continue reading]

An email came from Faith Morgan with a link to a documentary film called “Passive House Revolution,” produced by the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It was a busy day, but I thought I could use a break from words, so I left the stack of unopened emails for a while and watched the film. I’m glad that I did.[continue reading]

Training in building science and energy efficiency is essential to moving the house building industry forward into Net Zero Energy, successfully. As BHE COO, Hal Richman has observed, many people in our industry do not see the entire value chain. It’s a complicated one – easy to see in this diagram how the home building industry is a hot, fragmented mess of experts and expertise, completely at odds with itself sometimes.[continue reading]

Weatherization is about more than just energy efficiency. It has always been about the health and comfort of the weatherized home’s occupants as well. For a long time these benefits of weatherization have been called “non-energy benefits.” But the health effects of weatherization have now taken pride of place alongside energy benefits. Now there is new research showing increased health and well being among families whose homes have been weatherized. A ...[continue reading]

The International Window Film Association (IWFA) said California residents can save the equivalent of four million barrels of oil yearly, or about the annual output of three, 500-Megawatt power stations, if window film were installed on just 10 percent of the dwellings built before building energy codes were mandated.
California leads the way as the first state to add window film into its building code and the opportunity for achieving the state’s energy ...[continue reading]

With the Google buyout of NEST thermostats, attention has turned from the “smart meter” to the thermostat as a focal point of residential energy efficiency. (Read this recent editorial by Alan Meier.) But several years ago Energy Star decided to no longer certify programmable thermostats, since several studies showed that people at home did not take advantage of the thermostat’s programming possibilities. One reason why people didn’t program ...[continue reading]

If we want to make good, or great, home performance a reality for more people and families across North America, we must come to some agreement on standard retrofit packages that work. Not every house is the same, but we can agree on standards that can be widely, quickly, and efficiently applied to similar housing types. The home performance community has more than three decades of experience to bear on the question. Please add your ...[continue reading]

An article published in The New York Times titled "How To Get A Job At Google" got me thinking about one of the most innovative companies in the 21st century. Google, the people who want to "organize the world's information," was named one of the best places to work in 2012 and 2013 not only because of the free food 24/7, but also because of their culture and the Googlers who work there.[continue reading]